System modeling using virtual instruments

With virtual instrumentation systems, productivity can be increased as common development tools and test programs are shared amongst departments. Because PC-based instrumentation systems can leverage off rapid technological changes in the computer industry to produce virtual instruments, new uses and applications for such instrumentation systems are rapidly changing. As the performance of operating systems, processors, and buses improve without increasing the overall system price, these virtual instruments are becoming more advantageous for systems analysis and design applications. One such instrumentation package is LabVIEW (National Instruments Corp., Austin, Texas). This software package is one of the first graphical programming products, and is currently used in academia and industries for data acquisition, remote control, simulation, and analysis. Since LabVIEW is based on graphical programming, users can build instrumentation called "virtual instruments" using software objects. With proper hardware these virtual instruments can be used for remote data acquisition, analysis, design and distributed control. The objective of this paper is to discuss design and analysis of different systems using virtual instruments, with special emphasis on electrical/electronics systems.